Mode controllable TEA CO/sub 2/ laser with a couple of compact profile electrodes and non-raining discharge, and its applications

A brief description is given about the discharge physics under high pressure gas for better understanding of our effort on improving the structure of the TEA CO/sub 2/ laser. An semi-extra, semi-spherical cavity is built for controlling the laser mode structure. By controlling the gain and the cavity, a series of mode structures have been recorded in our experiments. During the experiments, a TEM/sub 00/ mode operation can be stable under the control.